


somewhere inside

by So_Caffeinated (so_caffeinated)



Series: Crazyness in Crazy Town (cross-fandom prompts) [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter RPG, Prison Break
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Imaginary Friends, Insanity, Mental Health Issues, References to Child Abuse, meme challenge, prompt: hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 06:47:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_caffeinated/pseuds/So_Caffeinated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, to have a break-through, you have to have a break-down...</p>
            </blockquote>





	somewhere inside

**Author's Note:**

> Meme Challenge  
> Prompt: Hurt/Comfort (which sort of happened but not really)  
> Characters: Michael Scofield (Prison Break) and Stella Gardner (Harry Potter RPG)
> 
> Some lines were lifted directly from Prison Break canon. All credit for those bits belong to the show, its writers and creators.

 

When he was little, when he was bounced from foster family to foster family and locked in small dark rooms, Lincoln was there more often than not. But, when he wasn’t, there was Stella.  
  
It had been easy, as he’d gotten older and stopped seeing Stella, to convince himself that she’d been a childhood imaginary friend. That was normal enough, easily explained away by his therapists. Coping mechanism, they’d said. Healthy, they’d all agreed.  
  
He doubted they’d say that now.  
  
“The whole point of solitary is to break you, make you crazy,” Lincoln’s voice said, drifting up through the grate. “You gotta keep strong. Do you hear me? Don’t let them break you.”  
  
“Oh, Michael... We both know you were already more than halfway there,” she said, sitting cross-legged two feet away from him on the other side of the drain in the concrete floor.  
  
She wasn’t the little girl he remembered anymore. She’d grown up like he had, like she was real. The little innocent childhood playmate was gone and in her place was someone wild and tarnished and not even a little bit innocent-looking. He didn’t stop to wonder what that meant, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t nothing.  
  
“You’re not real,” he told her, though his voice didn’t echo and Lincoln didn’t freak the hell out, so he probably didn’t say it aloud.  
  
“Well that’s kind of rude and marginalizing, isn’t it?” she asked, standing and surveying his cell.  
  
Honestly, Michael had too much to worry about at the moment to think about whether or not he was insulting his own subconscious.  
  
“This feels familiar,” she followed up, eyes scanning the tiny, dark room.  
  
“Shut up, Stella,” he grumbled, even if he felt about eight-years-old addressing her directly.  
  
“You’re a big boy this time, though. How did you get into this mess?” she asked.  
  
“You’re in my head. Don’t you know?” he asked.  
  
“That depends. Do you?” she countered curiously.  
  
It was a fair question, but not one he wanted to field. Not now. Not with so much at stake and time ticking down fast.  
  
“Unless you’re here to be helpful, you can go away and let me think in peace,” he told her.  
  
“Actually, I am here to be helpful,” she said, running her fingers along the bricks in the wall.  
  
“How?” Michael asked warily.  
  
“You know the way out,” she told him. “Somewhere in you, you do. You see everything. You studied those plans for years. You just need to remember, to see it again. You put your blood into this.”  
  
“I put my blood into this,” Michael repeated, his voice echoing in the room, and Stella grinned widely.  
  
He tapped his fingers on the concrete floor as he stared up at her.  
  
“You just have to think,” she told him. “You already know the answer. It’s right in front of you.”  
  
“Michael? You okay? Whatcha doing?” Lincoln’s voice drifted through the grate.  
  
She crouched next to him, wild blond curls catching the scant bit of light seeping into the room from the slats at the bottom of the door.  
  
“Do you see it yet?” she asked.  
  
And, God, he could see her as clear as day and smell that same herbal scent that always wafted around her and he was pretty sure if he reached out she’d be solid against his fingertips. That should probably scare the hell out of him, but right now he had more to worry about than his mental health.  
  
“I’m trying to remember what’s beneath psych ward,” he said, answering both of them.  
  
“You’re going about this backwards,” she told him.  
  
“You’re thinking about the wrong thing,” Lincoln unknowingly agreed.  
  
“See? Even he knows it,” Stella interrupted, talking over Lincoln.  
  
“You’ve gotta think about how to get out of here,” Lincoln counseled.  
  
Stella stared at Michael with a challenging look and he scrubbed his face with his hands in frustration. From the corner of his vision, he spied a hole in his sleeve and something in his brain clicked at the sight of it. Hastily, he pulled the sweatshirt off.  
  
“Not exactly what I had in mind, but I’m game if you are,” she winked suggestively.  
  
“...Did my own hallucination really just hit on me?” he paused, staring at her in disbelief.  
  
“Apparently you’re not quite as self-deprecating as you thought,” she shrugged.  
  
He shot her a look, but otherwise ignored her, focusing instead on tearing the sweatshirt into strips and laying them out on the floor.  
  
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Stella told him as he tore at the collar of his shirt with his teeth, all of the previous lightness of her voice gone.  
  
“Michael?” Lincoln’s voice asked from the next cell over. “Aw, man, come on. Talk to me.”  
  
“He can’t help you,” Stella told Michael. “Not now. Not with this. This is just you and me, Mike. Like old times.”  
  
“So help me,” he challenged her, looking up from his haphazard blueprint laid out in cheap gray cotton. “If you’re here to help me, then help me.”  
  
“I’ve been helping you for years,” she told him.  
  
“I haven’t even seen you since I was a kid,” he countered.  
  
“Right,” she scoffed. “That whole gothic tattoo design had nothing at all to do with me. You’re the left brain, Michael, and I’m the right. You’ve never been without me. Not ever. And you never will be.”  
  
A chill ran down his spine and he shuddered at her words, swiping at the strips of fabric strewn across the floor in defiance and frustration.  
  
“Sane people don’t hallucinate imaginary friends,” she said gently, like she was approaching a wounded wild animal. “You’re crazy, Michael. And that’s your way out of here. I’m your way out of here.”  
  
He wanted to protest, call her crazy, call her a liar. But she was him, she was something in him, and if she was those things, so was he.  
  
“And you know it,” she continued, mirroring his thoughts. “You must or I wouldn’t be here.”  
  
“I put my blood into this,” he said again, rising to his feet.  
  
“We put our blood into this, Michael,” she told him solemnly, looking meaningfully from his hand to the wall in front of him. “And we’re not done yet.”

 


End file.
